Ventura’s marked-text model is one of the reasons the program remains useful in structured publishing. Instead of treating formatting as a collection of visual accidents, the text can carry explicit paragraph tags and character codes that a Ventura style sheet interprets.
This is a practical reference to the classic marked-text dialect used and tested by Publishing Tools for Corel Ventura. It is not a claim to document every code emitted by every historical release of Ventura.
Basic file structure
A classic text export begins with:
@PARAFILTR ON =Each paragraph is then represented as a tag, an equals sign, and the paragraph text:
@Main Heading = Chapter One
@Body Text = This is the first paragraph.The exporter uses DOS-style CRLF line endings and a blank physical line between tagged records.
Common paragraph mappings
| Source role | Default Ventura tag |
|---|---|
| Title / Heading 1 | Main Heading |
| Heading 2 | Subheading |
| Heading 3–6 | Minor Heading |
| Ordinary paragraph | Body Text |
| Quotation | Block Quote |
| Bulleted item | Bullet |
| Numbered item | Numbered List |
| Caption | Caption |
| Table row | Table Text |
| Media reference | Media Reference |
The tag name controls the role, not the typography. Font, spacing, numbering, tabs, and breaks are properties of the matching Ventura style-sheet tag.
Inline character formatting
The verified exporter uses these codes for common inline formatting:
<B>bold<D>
<I>italic<D>
<U>underline<D>
<^>superscript<D>
<v>subscript<D><D> resets character formatting. When styles are nested, an exporter has to reapply any outer style that should remain active after the reset.
Line breaks inside a paragraph
A required line break within one tagged paragraph is represented with <R>. This is useful for verse and other material where lineation matters but the lines belong to one logical paragraph or stanza.
Literal angle brackets and characters
Because angle brackets introduce Ventura codes, literal less-than and greater-than signs must not be allowed to masquerade as markup. The plugin’s Ventura numeric-code mode emits them as numeric character codes.
For Western punctuation and accented characters, the exporter uses a controlled Windows-1252/ANSI-oriented mapping and Ventura numeric codes where appropriate. Characters outside the supported range are normalized or transliterated when possible; otherwise the export substitutes a question mark and records a preflight warning.
This is deliberate. Ventura 10 is not a Unicode-complete text environment, so silently claiming that every modern Unicode character will survive would be unsafe.
Index markers
Book Builder can insert native, nonprinting Ventura index references after ordinary character encoding. Examples:
<$IChocolate>
<$IChocolate;sauce>
<$I[Recipes]Chocolate;sauce>
<$IChocolate(Cacao);sauce>The semicolon introduces another index level, square brackets identify a category, and parentheses contain a sort key. The marker belongs in the Ventura source; it should not appear in a printable RTF proof.
Tables
The plugin’s conservative classic-text mapping emits one Table Text paragraph per row, with cells separated by tabs. Configure tab stops in the Ventura tag or convert the material into a native Ventura table after import when the publication needs a more elaborate table structure.
What is intentionally not faked
Arbitrary modern CSS font sizes, colors, highlighting, strike-through, syntax coloring, and live web hyperlinks are not invented as undocumented Ventura codes. Where there is no verified equivalent, the exporter preserves readable text and reports the loss through preflight.
Why marked text is still useful
It is plain enough to inspect, diff, archive, and regenerate, yet structured enough to drive a mature Ventura style sheet. That makes it a good interchange layer between a modern content system and an old but powerful long-document compositor.
Related documentation
- Ventura Publisher Windows Edition 4.1 reference manual
- Old File Viewer: early Ventura format and tagged-text notes
Publishing Tools for Corel Ventura generates this marked text directly from WordPress and preflights lossy conversions before you bring the file into Ventura.
